Plex Day
I wrote about Plex on December 16, 2020 and again on December 15, 2021. Therefore, the third Wednesday in December is Plex day from now on. I stubbed out a post for 2022, but I was at a weird point in my life then and never got around to writing it. Fortunately, I just finished school and now I have a little bit of free time again. Hence, Plex Day 2023.
At the end of 2020, I was just getting started with Plex. I suffered through the issues with getting my music collection organized into a folder structure that plays well with Plex Media Server. At that time, it wasn’t that I was passionate about Plex as a platform, I was just looking for something to replace Google Play Music (Pour one out for the homies).
By December 2021, I was a little more sold on Plex. In fact, I had purchased the lifetime Plex Pass in August 2021, I was just really ahead on writing posts and that post didn’t publish until December. In either case, I was making a gamble. If I bought a lifetime Plex Pass and ended up switching to another platform, I would have wasted the money. The breakeven point for a monthly membership would be 2 years and yearly membership is 3 years. Two years from August 2021 is August 2023, so we only recently hit that point. Am I still using Plex?
As the post implies, yes, I am still using Plex.
The physical hardware that I use for my Plex server has shifted a bit through the years. In the beginning, I used my wife’s old laptop with the broken hinge as a server. It made sense, the hinge was broken, so it wasn’t like I was actually going to be using it for anything else. What I didn’t fully appreciate was the working integrated DVD drive. If I wanted to rip a movie or music CD, I just popped the disc in and loaded up Handbrake or Windows Media Player. Everything was on the same system, so pulling in new media was super easy.
During the camper year, the Plex laptop died. I’m not sure exactly what happened to it. My mother moved it to clean, and when she moved it back it wouldn’t power on. I fiddled with it and tried any troubleshooting I could think of, but it was dead. Unfortunately, I didn’t have anything backed up. Fortunately, I could pop the device open and pull the HDD out.
I removed the HDD and asked around about SATA to USB cables. Sure, I could buy one if I really needed to, but this was a one time action that I didn’t figure I would probably need to do ever again, or at least not for a while. It didn’t make any sense to buy hardware for such a single use purpose. A friend had one available that he let me borrow, and I was able to plug it into my Surface Pro 7 and access all the contents. Talk about good luck.
I unloaded basically the entire drive to my 5TB external. The music folder looked fine, and the Plex Media Server installation and databases seemed like they were okay from what I could tell. I pulled everything down onto my Surface Pro 6. I originally intended it to be a sort of personal development environment, but never actually used it for that. Since I needed some dedicated hardware to run Plex and I didn’t have another old laptop sitting around, I figured it may as well fall to the Surface.
I went through the configuration steps again and I was able to play music from another device. If possible, I wanted to recover the play history and metadata, but I couldn’t readily figure out how to port that over. Realistically, I HAD the information. I just didn’t know how to give it to Plex. Turns out, after a good bit of research and some trial and error, I figured out that you just drop that database file into the folder where Plex Media Server generates it originally and replace the default file. Nothing else to it. As soon as I did that and restarted the server, the play history and metadata were all right where they should be.
When everything was back up and running, I thought we were in good shape. That is, until I needed to rip a DVD. The Surface Pro 6 does not have a disc drive. It has a Surface Connect port, a USB A, and a Mini DisplayPort. You can’t rip a DVD with that. I investigated USB DVD drives. Heck, I even looked into USB BluRay drives. I’ve been meaning to get a BluRay writer for probably half a decade in order to make permanent backups of our pictures and videos to store in a fire safe. I still don’t have one of those. Hence, I’m not ripping any music or movies right now. Maybe I’ll pick one up next year, or maybe my piracy days are over. (My piracy days are MOST DEFINITELY not over.)
For now, the Plex server is functional. I moved the music folder to a 400GB SD card in the Surface Pro 6 for portability, and the movies and TV shows are still on the 5TB external. The end goal for Plex Media Server hardware was originally going to be a NAS and NVIDIA Shield, but I’m reconsidering that theory in the wake of the disc drive issue. A NAS is still the way to go for storage, I’m convinced. The actual hardware on which Plex Media Server runs is up for debate, though.
I recently pulled an old desktop out of storage, and I’m contemplating repurposing that as a media center. I would have to replace most of the internals (most of the components are from when I originally bought that box back in 2012), and I would probably get an internal BluRay drive to install in it. That circumvents the issues with the USB BluRay drives, and it gives me a sort of central location for all my media.
I’m still undecided, but I do see the hardware situation shifting some in the near future. What I don’t see changing is Plex as the main mechanism for music consumption, and potentially even consuming more visual media through Plex. If Netflix keeps going up on its monthly subscription fee, the effort of maintaining music and videos in one location on Plex is looking better and better. That Plex Pass is still putting in work, and will continue to do so into the future.
By December 2021, I was a little more sold on Plex. In fact, I had purchased the lifetime Plex Pass in August 2021, I was just really ahead on writing posts and that post didn’t publish until December. In either case, I was making a gamble. If I bought a lifetime Plex Pass and ended up switching to another platform, I would have wasted the money. The breakeven point for a monthly membership would be 2 years and yearly membership is 3 years. Two years from August 2021 is August 2023, so we only recently hit that point. Am I still using Plex?
As the post implies, yes, I am still using Plex.
The physical hardware that I use for my Plex server has shifted a bit through the years. In the beginning, I used my wife’s old laptop with the broken hinge as a server. It made sense, the hinge was broken, so it wasn’t like I was actually going to be using it for anything else. What I didn’t fully appreciate was the working integrated DVD drive. If I wanted to rip a movie or music CD, I just popped the disc in and loaded up Handbrake or Windows Media Player. Everything was on the same system, so pulling in new media was super easy.
During the camper year, the Plex laptop died. I’m not sure exactly what happened to it. My mother moved it to clean, and when she moved it back it wouldn’t power on. I fiddled with it and tried any troubleshooting I could think of, but it was dead. Unfortunately, I didn’t have anything backed up. Fortunately, I could pop the device open and pull the HDD out.
I removed the HDD and asked around about SATA to USB cables. Sure, I could buy one if I really needed to, but this was a one time action that I didn’t figure I would probably need to do ever again, or at least not for a while. It didn’t make any sense to buy hardware for such a single use purpose. A friend had one available that he let me borrow, and I was able to plug it into my Surface Pro 7 and access all the contents. Talk about good luck.
I unloaded basically the entire drive to my 5TB external. The music folder looked fine, and the Plex Media Server installation and databases seemed like they were okay from what I could tell. I pulled everything down onto my Surface Pro 6. I originally intended it to be a sort of personal development environment, but never actually used it for that. Since I needed some dedicated hardware to run Plex and I didn’t have another old laptop sitting around, I figured it may as well fall to the Surface.
I went through the configuration steps again and I was able to play music from another device. If possible, I wanted to recover the play history and metadata, but I couldn’t readily figure out how to port that over. Realistically, I HAD the information. I just didn’t know how to give it to Plex. Turns out, after a good bit of research and some trial and error, I figured out that you just drop that database file into the folder where Plex Media Server generates it originally and replace the default file. Nothing else to it. As soon as I did that and restarted the server, the play history and metadata were all right where they should be.
When everything was back up and running, I thought we were in good shape. That is, until I needed to rip a DVD. The Surface Pro 6 does not have a disc drive. It has a Surface Connect port, a USB A, and a Mini DisplayPort. You can’t rip a DVD with that. I investigated USB DVD drives. Heck, I even looked into USB BluRay drives. I’ve been meaning to get a BluRay writer for probably half a decade in order to make permanent backups of our pictures and videos to store in a fire safe. I still don’t have one of those. Hence, I’m not ripping any music or movies right now. Maybe I’ll pick one up next year, or maybe my piracy days are over. (My piracy days are MOST DEFINITELY not over.)
For now, the Plex server is functional. I moved the music folder to a 400GB SD card in the Surface Pro 6 for portability, and the movies and TV shows are still on the 5TB external. The end goal for Plex Media Server hardware was originally going to be a NAS and NVIDIA Shield, but I’m reconsidering that theory in the wake of the disc drive issue. A NAS is still the way to go for storage, I’m convinced. The actual hardware on which Plex Media Server runs is up for debate, though.
I recently pulled an old desktop out of storage, and I’m contemplating repurposing that as a media center. I would have to replace most of the internals (most of the components are from when I originally bought that box back in 2012), and I would probably get an internal BluRay drive to install in it. That circumvents the issues with the USB BluRay drives, and it gives me a sort of central location for all my media.
I’m still undecided, but I do see the hardware situation shifting some in the near future. What I don’t see changing is Plex as the main mechanism for music consumption, and potentially even consuming more visual media through Plex. If Netflix keeps going up on its monthly subscription fee, the effort of maintaining music and videos in one location on Plex is looking better and better. That Plex Pass is still putting in work, and will continue to do so into the future.
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